24 October 2008

Susan Stewart

[from Susan Stewart's The Forest, University of Chicago Press, 1995]

1936

Her mother is rolling cigars in the factory.She is best of all, even perfect. She tapsthe woody threads, immaculate, into the acridraw silk of the wrapping.Best of all, she can do it without thinking or asking,could do it while talking, but doesn't ever.And so she could never be the cacklingfloor-boss or the foreman who stands theretethered to the watch. She's in it, for good,on the floor, for life, watching the stringstucked into their casings, each brown budtaut below her long white hands.And just her one thought — this is mymachine — the shroud around the shadows.You, genre painter, who finds in this beautyand who, from this, would make an enduring thing,or you who could build from this some plot strungwith ornaments, constructing a monumentat the site of its senselessness,turn away, turn from the din and the dust,and choose someone else — not her.